This spring, just before Simon and Teddy went to their new homes, they developed a favorite game. One of them would go outside, get a piece of pea gravel, and bring it back into the house, and then they’d both take turns batting it all over the floor and then pouncing on it like it was prey.

As you can imagine, this was not my favorite game, although I did like it somewhat better than their other game, which was called “You go under that chair and I’ll pull you out by digging my teeth into your thigh while you scream”.

Every time I saw Simon or Teddy bringing a rock into their house (they looked like little kids trying to hide the illicit gum they were chewing – “rock im my mouf? whad rock im my mouf? Deres no rock im here”), I’d grab them and wrestle the rock away from them. Teddy one day saw me coming towards him, blinked a few times, and swallowed his rock with an audible ‘gulp’ sound. I had a worried day and change after that, picturing a rock just sitting in his stomach, wearing a hole in his lining while it calcified into the size of a brick. Of course, he handily pooped it out, and the next day he and Simon were once again trying to bring rocks inside the house.

If I was worried, you can only imagine how the family of a five month old Pug puppy named Alfie felt when they realized he’d eaten not just one stone, but a full half pound of pebbles!

…Owner Nicola Loizides, 43, spotted something was amiss when she picked him up and noticed he was ‘substantially heavier’.

She put two and two together after feeling his stomach – which she said felt more like a Beanie Baby – and noticed him chewing a stone outside.

The worried mother-of-two rushed Harrods-bought Alfie to the vets, where he went under the knife for an emergency operation.

Vets pulled out half a pound of stones from his stomach just in the nick of time. Had it been left for longer the shingle could have perforated his intestines which would have potentially been fatal.

Here’s an xray of Alfie’s tummy –

Alfie’s vet, Mark Collins, said:

‘Alfie is a very lucky dog indeed. He must have been very sore but when he first came into the surgery he looked remarkably well – he was running about and wagging his tail.

‘His owner had seen him eating the stones, so we sent him in for an X-ray and it showed he had an entire stomach full. I couldn’t believe it. We sometimes have animals in who have swallowed the odd stone, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

‘We managed to operate to remove the stones and within half an hour Alfie was up and about again.
‘If his owner hadn’t caught it, the stones would have passed into his small intestine which could have been perforated.

Pickle said to tell you that we have a whole courtyard full of them. She says you can easily bring entire mouthfuls of pebbles in through the dog door, and that smacking them around the room at three am makes the most wonderfully satisfying sound.

It comes in two varieties — “I haf brot you a egg dat I finded in da shrubbery” mode and the “I do not haf a egg dat I shud not haf” mode.

What’s remarkable is the care that they take not to break the egg, which is not easy for a medium-sized dog where the teeth are in contact with the egg.

I have some hens that are laying weak shells now, and even a golden retriever can’t carry one of those. I saw Sophia pick one up and it burst in her mouth. Rather than happy for the snack, she looked very put out.

LOL! When Sushi has something in her mouth that she shouldn’t have, which is basically everything she encounters.. *sigh* .. she won’t even make eye contact with me. She’ll face slightly off to the side to hide her cheek (full of poop, pebbles, chewed gum off of the sidewalk, bugs, tealight candles, flowers, paper, etc.) and try to chew and gulp down whatever she’s got before I can get to her. She’s also really good at sticking stuff to the roof of her mouth so that when I come swooping down on her – jamming my fingers into her mouth and finding nothing – she can give me an indignant look as if to say “How could you think so little of me to even suggest that I’d put anything into my mouth other than food and water”.

Side note – she does this thing that I call ‘fake eating’ where when I’m having dinner, she’ll sit near me and make smacking and chewing noises with her mouth, like I’ve dropped a whole piece of pizza on the floor or something. It drives Lola CRAZY. Blind dogs don’t like to be snubbed when it comes to hand outs.

Our lab shepard mix swallowed a rock when she was 2 years old. My husband brought her to the vet because he knew he would “be able to do what needed to be done” if it would require an expensive surgery. He called my an hour later choked up saying what day her surgery was scheduled for. $800 dollars later, we have had eight more wonderful years with her & still counting. We faithfully scold her for looking longingly at any tempting rock & never hesitate to yell in a traumitizing way at any small child that dares to try to play fetch with her & a rock.

I know, it’s disgusting – and I can’t believe that Harrods hasn’t caved to the pressure for the UK AR movement. If they can mange to get even drag hunting banned, you’d think pet store puppy sales would be a walk in the park.

Last year I heard from someone who spent £4,000 on a Frenchie at Harrods – that’s over $6,000 USD!